Hi Uncle, re: The war in Iraq will have to be settled by the politicians. Our military cannot win a traditional military victory imho.
Changing the name and acronym will not change the situation. The war presently known as GWOT will continue. I believe the Army must reevaluate and demand strict adherence to its stated system of core values. Something has to give. We cannot afford more Iraqs. Yet the fight will go on. We must develop and inculcate in our conventional military leaders a new battlefield paradigm. One that respects and values innocent civilian lives and rights more than dead enemy soldiers. For certain the continuing fight will involve killing but it will have to be surgically done, with little to no collateral damage and the utmost care taken to protect non-combatants.
I hope that reflects the current views of some of the more progressive military thinkers. Our clumsy, heavy handed method of dealing with insurgents has been a disaster for us in Iraq and for Israel, creating fierce resistance and filling the ranks of those we fight.
A companion to that thought is that the civilian leadership must also understand that what we do in terms of authorizing force must be just and measured and must respect the sovereignty of other nations. The world's a dangerous place and we can be safer or less safe, depending on how we lead it.
On another subject, I read your post commenting on the Lt. Col who criticized the generals. What he never addressed, for obvious reasons, is that those who praised the doomed policies in Iraq clearly understood that their peers who hadn't done so were paying a steep price in terms of assignments, lack of promotions and early retirements.
The tendency to please the boss is human but with their soldiers lives on the line I'd have expected more of them to stand up and be counted. My experience, however, has been that those willing to stand up and be counted are far outnumbered by those unwilling to make waves and, one by one, they're weeded out by a system that rewards conformists, ass kissers and plodders over independent thinkers.
Maybe this debacle in Iraq will finally create an understanding of the problem and an effort to repair a bureaucratic system that's poorly configured to adapt and respond to complex, multifaceted missions. Ed |
